Docker now includes built-in container orchestration

Docker, the 800-pound gorilla of container technology, has recently added a new and very important trick to its magic act: Orchestration.

For musicians, orchestration means writing music for a particular musical group. For those us in IT, orchestration is the automated installation, coordination and management of complex software systems. We know orchestration best these days from its use in cloud DevOps.

Now, Docker has decided that orchestration should be built in to containers. Starting with Docker Engine 1.12, container orchestration will come bundled inside Docker.

Docker’s logic is that this “democratization” of orchestration will make container management much easier.

Specifically, according to Docker:

“Container orchestration is what is needed to transition from deploying containers individually on a single host, to deploying complex multi-container apps on many machines. It requires a distributed platform, independent from infrastructure, that stays online through the entire lifetime of your application, surviving hardware failure and software updates.”

Docker’s orchestration goal follows its “philosophy about containers: No setup, only a small number of simple concepts to learn, and an ‘it just works’ user experience.”

That sounds good. It may very well work well. But, I’m worried.

My concern is that ever since Solomon Hykes founded Docker, its mantra has been “batteries included, but swappable.” What that meant is that while Docker has been adding in more necessary components, such as networking and now orchestration, you can only switch them out for a different technology.

I hope that continues to be the case. I, for example, am very fond of Kubernetes for container orchestration. But, I remember how bitterly Docker fought with CoreOS, a rival container company when it opened its doors.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting-edge PC operating system; 300bps was a fast Internet connection; WordStar was the state-of-the-art word processor; and we liked it. His work has been published in everything from highly technical publications (IEEE Computer, ACM NetWorker, Byte) to business publications (eWEEK, InformationWeek, ZDNet) to popular technology (Computer Shopper, PC Magazine, PC World) to the mainstream press (Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek).